


A Modern Man

by keptein



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-28
Updated: 2012-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keptein/pseuds/keptein
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The night is bright, the city lights below engulfing the shine of the stars above.<br/>Not that Tony notices. He’d gone to the roof in search of Steve, and Steve he’d found, but not the Steve he was expecting. This Steve is hunched over the railing, back to Tony, looking out at New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Modern Man

The night is bright, the city lights below engulfing the shine of the stars above.

Not that Tony notices. He’d gone to the roof in search of Steve, and Steve he’d found, but not the Steve he was expecting. This Steve is hunched over the railing, back to Tony, looking out at New York.

Also, Tony’s pretty sure he’s crying.

_Shit_. This is like a textbook example of everything he can’t – and really, really shouldn’t – deal with, but Steve looks so utterly miserable, completely alone, a jarring contrast to the still bustling city below.

“Cap!”

Steve flinches, actually visibly flinches, and Tony only has a few seconds to reflect on his grave mistake before Steve’s turning towards him, scrambling a hand across his face, and—

Jesus, he’d actually been crying. Well, this is massively awkward.

“St—Tony,” Steve says, and Tony almost flinches himself at the sound of the barely bitten back name.

“Hey,” Tony says, and thinks, _fuck_ , what a great moment for his usually reliable verbal diarrhea to disappear.

“What do you want?” Steve says curtly, embarrassment clear in every line of his body, in the blue eyes that won’t meet Tony’s.

“I, uh, I—” _wanted to pick a fight_ , Tony almost says, because it’s true, it’s always true, and today had been so impressively shitty, and even if he and Steve were on a first name basis now – and even that just barely – they still weren’t _friends_ , and Steve was so easy and fun to wind up.

“Nothing,” he says finally, and continues watching Steve, the hunched line of his shoulders. A car squeals on the tarmac below them.

Steve’s not saying anything, and Tony’s mind is blank for some reason. The silence gets more and more awkward, until Tony imagines he can hear crickets chirping. He’s convinced this is some ring of hell—really, he’s Tony Stark, he doesn’t _do_ awkward.

“How’re you holding up there, champ?” Tony decides to say, and then barely avoids wincing, because wow, he just made things _worse_ , that’s almost impressive.

“Fine,” Steve says, and he’s glaring at part of Tony now (but still won’t meet his eyes, like seeing those red-rimmed blues would give Tony a revelation of how he was actually feeling, like Tony couldn’t imagine—he couldn’t, though, and wasn’t that the whole problem) and sending out clear signals to Stop Talking, but hey, Tony found his words.

“Nobody expects you to be peachy-keen, Cap, seriously,” Tony says, “like, probable PTSD and _then_ 70 years gone missing? It’s not exactly something people bounce back from, I mean. Hell, sometimes even _I’m_ surprised by the shit we can do now, and I’ve been called the personification of the modern age—” Tony sees Steve’s shoulders go progressively tighter with every word he says, oh God, he is _ruining_ this, why does he ever leave his workshop, can’t he build something to interact with other people for him? “I mean, not by me, of course, that’d be ridiculously presumptuous, although not far off—but Cap, really, the modern age is a lot to—”

“I wish,” Steve says loudly, abruptly, “people would stop calling it modern.” His words swallow Tony’s, thank God, because Tony was just digging himself a deeper hole. “Like the forties weren’t modern?”

“Well—” Tony starts, but Steve drowns his bullshit remark.

“We had _innovators,_ ” Steve says, and his hands are clenched into fists, and Tony thinks, _oh, shit_. “We had technology, we had the fundaments of everything you have to day, we were the people that _built this!_ ” He’s flung his arms out to encompass New York, and his back is straight with rage now. “I’m so _incredibly_ tired of people telling me of this modern world, like I’m a caveman from 4000 BC, like we didn’t dream of things much bigger than this, of space crafts and flying cars, everything!” Steve is shouting at the heavens, before his eyes and head turn back down toward Tony. Tony takes a step back. “The forties were something your generation has never experienced,” he says, and he’s looking at Tony now, finally, but it actually doesn’t help Tony at all in trying to understand what Steve is feeling, “we had the _atomic bomb_ , and you people expect me to cower beneath the power of a cellular phone?”

“I, uh,” Tony says helplessly, and what Steve sees in his eyes must tell him something, because he winds down, until he just looks worn. The pause that follows seems deafening, Steve’s words leaving an emptiness where they carved their way into the cold night, but Tony can’t look away from the sadness in Steve’s face, and he’s surprised by his own fierce wish to help.

“I’m sorry, Tony, you didn’t deserve that,” Steve says. He scrubs a hand across his face, turns his back on Tony again, leaning out to study the city.

“Fuck that,” Tony says, and comes up to stand beside Steve. The railing is cold under his fingers, and he darts a look over at Steve before discreetly imitating his posture. “Look, if you’re angry, _be angry._ Fucking—grab a chair and throw it at the wall, all that stuff. Find a tall mountain and shout, I’ve heard that helps. None of that 40s politeness, go on a _rage_. You must be hurting an awful lot—not,” Tony hastens to add, “just because of the time difference, but because you lost everyone you knew, Steve. And you’ve dealt inhumanely well so far.”

“Superhumanly well?” Steve says, and the joke is horrible, weak, and his voice is raw, but Tony still chuckles for it, grateful that Steve is willing to joke about this, that the slightly terrifying anger of a few moments ago seems to have passed.

“What I’m trying to say, Cap, is that if shouting at me makes you feel better, go for it. I am a definite supporter of shouting at or beating up things to cope with stuff, as long as what you’re beating up can either handle it or is a supervillain. And, you know,” Tony darts another look over at Steve, who is resolutely not looking over at him, “if you need someone to talk to, I— _we_ are here for you. And not because you’re Captain America. Well, that is why you’re on the team, but—because you’re Steve, and the others like you, I’ve heard.” This got horribly sappy horribly fast, and Tony is debating whether he can throw himself over the railing and still give MARK VIII enough time to dispatch. Probably not. He really isn’t qualified to handle other people’s breakdowns.

“Thanks, Tony,” Steve says, and a comfortable silence reigns until Tony claps him on the shoulder.

“Now, I actually came looking for you because Clint’s making waffles—wanna go see if there’s any left?”

“Gladly,” and the relief in Steve’s face is worth this entire mess of a conversation. Tony turns back to look at him once more before heading to the kitchen, looks at his shoulders, now more relaxed. His face has lost that unsettling quality it had when he arrived, although his eyes are still rimmed with red. Steve sees him look and offers him a smile, and Tony grins back. He hadn’t fixed it, with his sappy little speech, but he’d helped. And that is enough, for now.

Steve will be okay.


End file.
